


all things all at once

by shinealightonme



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Communication, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 02:35:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16467053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: Can we talk?Apparently they can't.





	all things all at once

**Author's Note:**

> For an anon on tumblr who prompted "Adam, How can I hate someone that I'm in love with?"

Adam checks his phone for the third time in five minutes. Nothing. He drops it on the table.

"How is it possible to love someone and hate them at the same time?" He doesn't so much ask the question as channel it from some primal darkness in the human soul.

Blue has as little time for _primal darkness_ as she does for any other nonsense. "Strong emotions all get processed in the same part of the brain, wires get crossed, yada yada blah." She doesn't even do him the courtesy of _blah_ ing to his face, just keeps flipping away at her textbook.

"You could at least pretend to care how I feel."

"If you want me to care, don't bug me while I'm trying to find the quadratic formula."

"The opposite of b -- "

That gets her attention. "I can find it for myself!"

Cheng, meanwhile, is straight up doodling on Blue's homework, but she doesn't snap at _him_. "Ah, Ms. Sargent, you're being cruel. The poor boy was expecting you to react to his use of the word _love_."

"I was not!"

"Uh-huh," Cheng and Blue say, in perfect time and perfect disbelief.

"I wasn't," Adam mutters, and checks his phone for a fourth time. Still no answer, because Ronan is a shitty texter and a shitty boyfriend and a shitty person.

He scrolls up through their text thread and winces. Ronan is not the only shitty boyfriend in this relationship.

"Go away," Blue says, "your moping is audible and it's distracting me."

Adam goes away, but not before he leans over Blue's textbook and whispers in her ear, "the answer to number ten is fifteen," and then he darts out of the room while she yells "Adam!" in outrage after him.

That lifts his spirits, but only for the time it takes him to glance back at his phone screen. No message from Ronan, and the last message Adam sent is still on display, the time stamp an hour old and mocking him: _I shouldn't have snapped at you, I was out of line. Can we talk?_

Apparently they can't. Never mind how much it cost Adam to send that text, to _grovel_ , that's less important than Ronan's stupid Luddite tendencies. Fine. It isn't like Adam _expects_ any better --

The phone lights up with an incoming message.

Adam's heart beats so fast that it takes him several blinking seconds to realize that it isn't Ronan.

 _I want to hear all of your moping_  
_Lover boy_  
_Spill the tea_

...and then there's just a series of boxes. Adam turns his phone off and shoves it into his pocket. At least his cheap phone saves him from Cheng's sea of emojis.

He wanders down Fox Way, passes his parked car and keeps walking.

Cheng is wrong. Adam wasn't fishing for a reaction when he said love. It's not news, it's not some big revelation just because Cheng is thirsty for gossip. Adam knows he loves Ronan. He just knows that he hates him sometimes, too. 

He maybe could have said it to Ronan before he said it to anyone else, though. Could have told Ronan _I love you_ after he said _I can't deal with you right now_. Or, ideally, _instead_ of that, but even in his wildest dreams Adam can't drum up that level of optimism.

"Oh, fuck me," Adam mutters, realizing all at once what he needs to do and that he needs his car to do it and that his car is six blocks behind him.

Their argument plays itself out in his head, over and over again, on the drive out to the Barns. He should have known a text apology wouldn't cut it, not when that had been what started the fight: _you need to answer your goddamn phone, Lynch_ \--

Adam counts as he breathes in, in, in, and then out. He's getting mad again. It's not like he asked for anything unreasonable.

_\-- being difficult doesn't make you special, everyone else makes compromises -- so fuck one of them if I'm such a pain in the ass --_

Left turn down a country road, and he has to wait for a truck to pass first. It's too quiet in the car. He rolls the window down.

_\-- do you even care I'm going away -- what the fuck kind of question is that -- if you can't answer a phone call --_

A car horn.

_\-- how am I supposed to talk to you -- I guess you'll have more time for everyone who's not a pain in the ass --_

A horn, again.

_\-- I can't deal with you right now --_

The horn, a third time, and a car pulls around Adam. He's been sitting at a stop sign waiting for it to turn green. He waves an apology to the car that was trapped behind him but they're long gone.

No, a text was never going to be enough, and that's a hard realization to swallow. All too soon texts are going to have to be enough.

Adam turns up the long driveway to the Barns. Somehow the air here is always clearer than anywhere else. It has to be a trick of the mind. If Adam can pass between this once-dreamt land to the rest of the world then so can pollution, storms, summer haze. He knows he hasn't actually entered a new world.

He slows and slows the car, easing down on the brake. By the time he reaches the house he's moving at a crawl.

There's no BMW out front.

Adam turns off the engine. The world around him is full of a thousand tiny noises that add up to silence. He knows without looking that Ronan isn't home.

He walks around anyway, feels the still and quiet soak under his skin, turn him into something whole.

Opal's out running around the fields. She speeds up when she sees him, comes crashing to a halt inside his personal space. There's a rotting tree branch dragging along the ground behind her. She holds it up in offering.

"No, thank you," Adam says, politely. Manners Are For Everyone Even Wild Goat Girls, and they're trying to set a positive example. Or, Adam is trying. Ronan mostly forgets and then swears at himself when he remembers that he was supposed to try.

Opal shrugs, _more for me,_ and bites off a chunk of damp bark.

Adam heads back into the house. Opal follows. She even leaves her rotten prize outside and wipes her hoofs without being reminded, though there's enough mud caked on them that it doesn't make a difference.

Adam is inclined to count intention for a lot, in this house.

"Do you know where Ronan is?" He opens the fridge. Three kinds of cake, five-sixth of a pack of Coors, and some kind of raw meat in a marinade. Opal would happily eat any of those. He grabs the milk jug and pours her a glass.

She shakes her head and nibbles experimentally at the rim of the glass.

"Just the milk," Adam tells her.

She sips like that was the only thing she ever planned on doing. Adam knows that look. It's not convincing when Ronan does it, either.

He leaves Opal behind and steps into the den. It's chock full of dream things: a remote control plane, a music box like a horse on an old time carousel, an oak leak brittle in fall colors that trembles in a non-existent wind. Most of these he doesn't know the stories of. It's a hodgepodge of Niall's legacy and Ronan's creations.

Adam can always tell them apart. Niall's remnants are impossible, magical, wondrous, and next to Ronan's they look like dollar store junk.

He wanders around the den, touching this piece of Ronan's soul, that piece of Ronan's heart. Once he starts it's a compulsion: he came here for Ronan, and if this is the closest he can find, he'll make it count.

Opal watches him travel the room. She shifts once, bored, but he doesn't change his behavior and she sits down right where she stands, on the floor in the doorway instead of moving over to a chair. Adam looks over and grins at her.

She holds eye contact. Her fingernails scrabble along the edge of the wallpaper until they can get under the edge and tear a huge strip off the wall.

Adam shakes his head and turns back to his wanderings.

The sun's low by the time he's inspected every piece of Ronan in the den. He moves out to the family room, which is somehow wide open and cozy at the same time. The dream things out here are all familiar; the favorites, the useful, the mysteries that Ronan wants to solve. Adam touches them all anyway.

It's dark. Adam writes a note to let Ronan know he came by.

 _I'm sorry I missed you. I'm sorry about all of it._  
_Come by St. Agnes when you can?_

He tells Opal good night -- she curls up into a ball in the corner, sulking and non-responsive. On a whim, he pulls out his phone to send Ronan a text, too.

A pair of headlights moves down the driveway, and a car pulls up to the house just as Adam's phone starts up again and informs him that he has nine texts and four missed calls from Ronan. 

He blinks at his phone. Is it _broken?_ What kind of software bug could do that?

Ronan gets out of the car, slams the driver's door shut, smacks it after it's shut. Takes a few steps while he turns, so he's halfway to the porch by the time he looks where he's going.

He stops so fast it's comical.

"You weren't home." It's superfluous, but Adam has to say something to break them out of this moment.

It works. Ronan goes from shocked to glad in a heartbeat, and then he's up on the porch like a whirlwind, arms and all the rest of him around Adam.

Adam returns the gesture, his hands pressing up into Ronan's back like it's been weeks instead of hours.

"Fuck, I looked all over for you." His voice is muffled against Adam's neck. "Your place, Gansey's shack, Fox Way -- "

Adam thinks about Ronan tracing down every part of Adam's soul, the same as Adam has been doing here. It makes him want to smile and sob.

"I turned my phone off, Cheng was annoying me."

"I was dreaming when you texted me," Ronan says. "I didn't see it. You must think I'm such an asshole."

"No." Adam kisses the tip of Ronan's ear, the nearest bit of him he can reach. "I mean, yeah, I did, but fuck that, I'm sorry."

"Neh," Ronan says, dismissive, the beginning of _no, I'm sorry_ , or _now it's over_ , or _knock it the fuck off, Parrish_ , or all three. He turns, and Adam can reach something better than his ear now.

They make out on the porch for a while before Ronan drags him inside. Adam no longer cares that it's late; it's not dark inside the house. They teeter and fall onto the couch together. The Barns has the largest couch Adam has ever seen but they're crammed onto one cushion together, breathless in a way like laughter, and he has no intention of moving.

There's something he wants to say to Ronan, and it's on the tip of his tongue to say it.

"What were you dreaming?" he asks instead. His good ear is resting against Ronan's chest, and he can feel his heart beating, fast and strong and essential. "This afternoon."

Ronan doesn't answer right away. Adam waits. Opal is sitting on top of a table, shredding something that looks suspiciously like a piece of carpet; he decides to let ignorance be bliss.

"I wanted to make something better than a phone," he says. "Like -- sci-fi Star Wars shit."

"Oh."

"It didn't work."

Adam has seen Ronan dream so many times, from the outside, from the inside. He can picture what that looked like: Ronan, trying to create something that would make the distance between them okay, watching it crumble away from him. Like trying to hold love and hate in your brain at the same time. It's too much of everything at once, even for Ronan.

Or maybe he just needs some help.

"We'll make it work," he declares, and when Ronan slides his palm against Adam's, he clasps his hand and holds on tight.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this fic you can [reblog it on tumblr.](http://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/179609747025/adam-14)


End file.
